I saw a movie with Brad Pitt – Using pencils to learn syntax

Abstract

This paper presents a research project conducted on four second-year English classes (approximately 110 students) at Sorbonne Nouvelle University (Paris, France) in 2021/2022. This project was motivated by the realization that students were struggling to understand the opposition between linearity and syntax and to grasp the basic syntax of noun phrases in English. This difficulty can be explained by two reasons: the students were not engaged in the learning process because they did not clearly understand what they had to learn about syntax; and what was expected of them – demonstrating their understanding of noun phrase structure by adding brackets – was beyond their reach.The authors assumed that a non-verbal modality such as drawing could serve as a first step in understanding the opposition between syntax and linearity. They hypothesized that offering more than one modality to demonstrate one’s understanding of noun phrase structure would address both difficulties: engaging the students and helping them achieve the learning outcomes. To that effect, they designed an activity that introduced the concept of syntactic ambiguity and that was both engaging and multimodal. Students were presented with syntactically ambiguous sentences such as "I saw a movie with Brad Pitt" and were asked to:• discuss the two possible interpretations in their own words, i.e., produce a gloss;• draw the two possible interpretations of the sentence; • add a follow-up sentence to clarify the context;• bracket the noun phrases to make the syntactic pattern visible.A satisfaction questionnaire was completed by 93 students at the end of the session and 111 midterm exam papers were collected for analysis.The results tend to prove that the original hypothesis was valid. Offering an array of mediums, including drawing, to describe the syntax of noun phrases made students feel confident and engaged. However, the lesson plan should also include activities that help students transition towards verbal expression as university students are expected to exhibit understanding in words.